Many of us have implemented oral communication instruction in our design courses, lab courses, and other courses where students give presentations. Others have students give presentations without instruction on how to become a better presenter. Many of us, then, could use a concise book that guides us on what instruction on oral communication should include, based on input from executives from different settings. This instruction will help our students get jobs and make them more likely to move up the career ladder, especially in these hard economic times.

Oral Communication Excellence for Engineers and Scientists: Based on Executive Input is the tool we need. It is based on input from over 75 executives with engineering or science degrees, leading organizations that employ engineers and scientists. For the presentation chapter, the executives described what makes a

About the Author(s)

Judith Shaul Norback, Georgia Institute of TechnologyJudith Shaul Norback, Ph.D., is general faculty and Director of Workplace and Academic Communication in the Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. She applies her skills as a social psychologist to gather data from executives about stellar presentations and other oral communication skills and she conducts research on communication, designed to improve instruction. Dr. Norback has developed and provided instruction for students in industrial engineering and biomedical engineering and has advised on oral communication instruction at many other universities. The Workplace Communication Lab she founded in 2003 has had over 19,500 student visits. As of spring 2013, she shared her instructional materials with over 240 schools from the U.S., Australia, Germany, and South Korea.

Dr. Norback has studied communication and other basic skills in the workplace and developed curriculum over the past 30 years; first at Educational Testing Service, then as part of the Center for Skills Enhancement, Inc., which she founded, with clients including the U.S. Department of Labor, the National Skill Standards Board, and universities. Since 2000, when arriving at Georgia Tech, her work has focused on engineers and scientists. She has published over 20 articles in the past decade alone, including articles in IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, INFORMS Transactions on Education, and the International Journal of Engineering Education.

Over the past 10 years Norback has given over 40 presentations and workshops at nationwide conferences such as the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), where she currently serves as chair of her division. Norback also holds an office for the Education Forum of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) and has served as Associate Chair for the Capstone Design Conference. Norback has a Bachelors degree from Cornell University and a Masters and Ph.D. from Princeton University. Her current research interests include increasing the reliability of the Norback/Utschig Presentation Scoring System for Engineers and Scientists and identifying the mental models students use when creating graphical representations.